


The Rough Caress of Ritual

by Menoe



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Blood Drinking, Bloodplay, F/M, Hallucinations, Hand Jobs, Incest, Knifeplay, Minor references to canonical animal harm, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Rituals, Shower Sex, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:54:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26299750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Menoe/pseuds/Menoe
Summary: The Bacchanalia's side effects only worsen in the weeks after Bunny's death.
Relationships: Camilla Macaulay/Charles Macaulay
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23
Collections: RelationShipping 2020





	The Rough Caress of Ritual

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



> Thank you for giving me an excuse to reread my favorite book! I hope you enjoy.
> 
> Title comes from Anne Carson's translation of _Bakkhai_.

Their uncle gave them a pair of matching hunting knives just before they went to college. There's good hunting in Vermont, he'd said, what with all its thick forests and hills.

Then, with a laugh, he told them to be careful about stepping onto someone's land. They can shoot you for that there, you know.

Camilla had to dig it out from a suitcase, untouched since she'd politely examined it and thanked her uncle. She was sure Charles's knife suffered the same fate, neither of them ever expressing much interest in hunting.

She cleaned the blade until half of her face reflected back at her and pressed a single finger gently onto the tip, just until a drop of blood welled from the prick. She mindlessly sucked the blood from her finger and set the knife on her vanity, resting atop a white piece of cloth, scrapped from an old shirt of Charles's that one of them had ruined, somehow, and repurposed in various ways. It was the one spot on her vanity free from clutter and chaos, the eye of the storm.

When she raised her head, there were two of her in the mirror of the vanity; an extra head, at least, and she had to blink twice to determine which was the real one.

The head above hers, the impostor, moved closer until her shoulders were trapped by a pair of arms and the smell of bourbon. Charles. They didn't really look that much alike, the mirror admitted now.

"Welcome back," she said. When had he returned? Hadn't she closed her door?

Charles made to bury his head in the crook of her neck when he caught sight of the knife in front of her.

"You still have that?" he asked.

"You don't?"

Charles half-shrugged with his arms still wrapped tight around her, which forced her to move as well. "I think I left it somewhere in the country house."

Camilla's lips tightened into a frown and she leaned her head back to look Charles in the eyes, upside down. "You shouldn't have."

-

Night was the worst of it. She awoke in pure darkness, hands neatly folded over her stomach like she'd been posed in a coffin. When she lifted herself, she found that she was not encased, just buried. Buried in pure white antlers that tumbled weightlessly off her body, then clattered like thunder when they hit the ground.

This was bad, she knew instinctively, because she was in a forest and all that noise would make her prey. A gunshot rang near her ear and she sprinted off, her legs stretching further than was possible, jointed oddly - oh, she was a deer again. Her only role was to be chased through the woods, same as always.

She stopped, miles away from her burial place, when she came upon a tattered pelt on the forest floor. It was heavy when she lifted it, larger than her, but fit perfectly around her shoulders. She moved outside of her body to look at herself and found a bear in her place.

The bear lumbered off on its own, leaving her behind without a body. All she could do was give chase as a pair of eyes, and the bear led her to a clearing, at the center of which sat the ruins of a temple. Shambles of Doric columns formed a rectangular structure that now protected nothing but bare stone floor. On the perimeter were statues, familiar Hellenistic sculptures, out of place and posed to act out scenes: children playing, priestesses singing, and on the steps of the temple, a young man leaned against the spot where an altar should have been, neck bared.

Camilla watched the bear shift until it walked with human legs, the pelt now wrapped around human shoulders, blond hair streaked with blood; a lookalike. The lookalike took her place on the steps of the temple as well, pulled Camilla's hunting knife out from somewhere in the pelt, and held it to the throat of the statue.

She swiped the knife across the man's marble throat, shallow cuts that Camilla could feel as if she were holding the knife herself, over and over. Uselessly, Camilla thought, until a bright red line slid down the sculpted curves of the statue and dripped onto the ground.

The lookalike stopped the cutting there, shifted her grip, and dug a deep gash down the statue's stomach. When she pulled the knife back, covered in impossible blood, she swiveled her head around to lock eyes with Camilla's disembodied form.

-

Two days ago, the water in her shower turned to blood. It bloomed first from her feet and trailed weakly to the drain, but she found no wound on either sole. Even the months old scar had faded. When she tilted her head up, the shower head spewed blood into her eyes and she felt it everywhere, inside and out.

She'd finished her shower and cleaned up the tub, but she'd avoided washing up since. Why she thought of that while she fought with Charles, she didn't know.

The fight was silly, born of unspoken anxieties that broke loose when Camilla finished Charles's glass of scotch. The bottle was still half-full but Charles exploded and they yelled until he broke away and grabbed his coat.

"I'm going out," he declared, pulling his arms through the sleeves.

"Shower with me," she replied.

The anger on his face melted into shock, and his coat dropped to the floor. "Well, alright."

-

She turned the water on for the shower, letting it run, and looked at Charles. He was starting to unbutton the cuffs of his white button-down, and Camilla set a hand on his wrist.

"Let me," she said. The corners of his mouth twisted up, lips parting to release a puff of breath, the kind that allowed him to pretend he was indulging her.

She undid each button slowly, carefully, like a painter trying to get her strokes just right. Charles didn't have the same focus and he fidgeted, eyes moving from her forehead to the shower, nervous that something might happen.

"I'm sorry," he breathed, as if it had been punched out of him.

Camilla smoothed her palm down the expanse of his chest, tracing the planes and angles she was so familiar with, feeling the swell of his breaths beneath her hand.

"Me too," she offered, distracted.

The shirt fell to the floor but she remained close enough to feel the heat emanating from his body, and she tugged his hips to hers when she slipped off his belt.

Impatient, he started pulling at the hem of her dress before she could finish undressing him. She raised her arms up above her head and he swept it off her body all at once. Then he attached himself to her, lips on her neck and hands digging into her underwear.

Steam had filled the bathroom by the time they made it into the shower, finally undressed, and Charles pressed Camilla up against the wall. His hair was plastered to his cheeks, framing his face with a dirty blond halo. All pretenses of washing gone, he slipped his hand between her thighs and stroked at her labia with elegant, practiced fingers. 

He'd always been the one with enough patience and rhythm for piano and he loved using those skills until she was coming over and over on his hand alone. He knew all the notes that made her grind her teeth, knew the torturous pressure she loved against her clit, never stayed in one place long enough to bore her.

Charles leaned himself down enough to mouth at her chest, sucking her nipple between his lips, and Camilla wrapped a hand around the back of his neck to keep herself steady. Her free hand went to Charles's cock and the water made it difficult to keep a tight grip, but his ragged breaths told her he was enjoying himself anyway. She flicked her wrist to the same punishing pace that Charles was using to rub at her clit and every part of them was so wet and slick that their bodies slotted together perfectly.

Camilla felt the wave of her orgasm first, biting her lip to keep back a groan, but Charles came soon after with a guttural cry, right against her stomach, the hot droplets quickly washed away by the shower.

He swore and kept his hands on her, starting to sink down to his knees for more when she pushed him back, too sensitive and dizzied from the heat of the shower.

"I want you," he rasped, his face bright red from alcohol and sex and near-scalding water. Not from blood, at least. They were on the right path.

"Let's go to bed, then," she said.

-

"What are you doing?" Charles asked, dried and naked and sprawled on her bed, confused rather than scared.

Camilla held the knife up to the moonlight that shone through the curtains, the only source of light in the room.

"Have you had any strange dreams?" She climbed into the bed and knelt by his side, clutching the knife loosely in her hand.

"I haven't been dreaming at all," he answered, his eyes moving curiously between her and the knife. "Not that I can remember."

Camilla set the knife by his side and crawled over his body, her fingers tracing over the hard lines of his chest. "But you've been seeing things?"

This made Charles laugh, and he reached up to brush some damp hair back behind her ear.

"I think we've all been seeing things, since that night."

"But it's been getting worse. Since Bunny," she said, eyes fixing on the curve of Charles's throat, the way his Adam's apple bobbed as she swept her hand down his taut stomach. "I think there's a way to purify both of us."

"Both of us," he repeated with interest. He'd always been easy to convince when it came to secrets that only they shared.

"Just us." In Greek, she quoted, " _As Thou, O Goddess, lovest well / Phoebus, Thy brother, shall I not love mine?"_

His grey eyes went soft, any tension in him relaxed. He understood, then, the reason why it was for them alone. "What's that from?"

She explained first her dream as the demand it was, as a prophecy rather than the product of a guilty mind. "From Artemis herself," he pondered aloud. Camilla reminded him of _Iphigeneia in Tauris_ , putting on the voice she'd used for Athena when they read it in class. 

_"The priest must hold against a human throat / The sharp blade of his knife and touch the edge / With blood, then cease - meaning that life, not / death, / Is the true element of sacrifice."_

Charles blinked slowly, alcohol fogging his mind, but his hands smoothed casually down her sides. "But why the stomach? That's not part of the ritual at Tauropolis or Brauron."

"For the farmer, I think." That was all she could think of when she saw the gash through the statue's stomach. The way they'd left that farmer mutilated and split in two. When Charles opened his mouth to rebut, she added, "When Henry had us purify with the piglet, it wasn't to Artemis. She usually wants bigger sacrifices."

Charles licked his lips and thought, then shook his head with a bitter laugh. "It can't be any worse than being interrogated."

Camilla curved one hand around his neck and kissed him hard, teeth clacking, and she felt his pulse thrumming beneath her fingers. There was a skill to this ritual that she didn't have, to cut without making a mess of blood, but she trusted Artemis Agrotera to guide her hand as she grabbed the knife.

Charles was not marble, and his flesh acquiesced to the knife as soon as she pressed it to his throat. She'd tested it earlier, knew that it was still razor-sharp, and all she had to do was glide it across his neck. Charles let out a breath when it didn't hurt immediately, his eyes wide and unfocused on the ceiling.

The blade came back clean and Charles's fingers dug into her thighs for every drag against his skin, becoming coarse with cuts until the moon illuminated a thin trail of blood forming across his neck. Camilla watched it accumulate, then tenderly pressed her fingers to the wound, making Charles groan in a nervous pitch that reminded her of the poor piglet that Henry held above their heads.

With the tips of her fingers painted red, she smeared his blood across her throat to mirror him. When he swallowed, eyes flickering over her body, she saw his eyelids flinch in pain.

"I'm sorry," she said, thumb stroking at his jawline.

"It doesn't really hurt," he replied with a lopsided smile.

"Liar."

She pushed herself back to sit at his legs and felt his half-hard cock press against her thighs. He readjusted himself absentmindedly, then caught her eyes and nodded to the knife to tell her to keep going.

This cut would be different. It had to be singular and deep enough to make him bleed, but no more than necessary. The last thing they needed was a trip to the hospital. His stomach trembled the closer the knife came, and she belatedly realized that her arm was doing the same.

She steeled herself, looking deep within her consciousness to find the Camilla that had so skillfully performed her duty at the altar. Her fingers poked at Charles's torso until she found the softest part of his belly, and let the blade follow in one long, quick dissection that ended just above his navel.

Charles brought his fist to his mouth, biting down, and the blood came quicker this time. It pooled around the wound and she gathered it onto her fingers, tracing a matching line of blood down her stomach. It was all she could do to show that his pain was hers, that she could feel the shadow of it in a realm beyond the physical. The cut still bled, unforgiving, and Charles's breaths were coming fast.

Camilla leaned down over him and swept her tongue up the cut, bitter iron staining her tongue as she lapped his blood into her mouth, cleaning, taking the essence of his life into her body. He'd calmed by the time she was done and he'd hardened against her hip, oddly aroused in the same way that she was.

Their lips met with the gentleness of grief, and they shared the taste of blood between them. When Charles's hand went between her legs, he laughed with a breath of surprise.

"You're so wet," he said, voice thick with arousal. "Should I be worried?"

Camilla gave a one-shoulder shrug and sat up to place the knife on the nightstand, unconcerned about the drying blood on the blade, and grabbed a condom from the drawer. Wet was an understatement. Slickness coated her inner thighs and every move she made stirred the vast, ravenous need growing inside her.

She felt herself spread so easily for him, sinking down to his hilt with only a little force from his hips. He cupped her breasts like this was normal, like the grinding from her hips wasn't opening the cut on his belly again, like she wasn't painted with his blood. She dug her dull nails into his shoulders and rode him with a fervor she'd never felt before, not even during the Bacchic high, hips snapping so erratically that his breaths became labored, pained with the exertion placed upon his wounded body.

It felt like it lasted all night, taking his blood and love and energy for herself, and she remained wide awake even while Charles snored next to her.

Her mind was fogged, filled with thoughts that she couldn't quite translate. All she understood was an unfamiliar, intrusive voice in her mind that repeated an incessant hymn:

_Let me now think of none but Artemis  
And serve Her with the worship She demands._

**Author's Note:**

> The quotes used are from Witter Bynner's translation of _Iphigenia in Tauris._


End file.
